Beata Wojciechowska
Jan Kochanowski University
In the Middle Ages, Polish Christian holidays remained consistent, except for minor temporary deviations. They included the basic structure of pre-Christian rituals.
Yet, traces of the old Slavic ritual calendar can be clearly identified in the Polish and Czech sources from the fourteenth- and fifteenth-centuries. Those were rituals and practices of the ancient, broad context of beliefs which confirmed that certain traditional attitudes and behaviour were still very much alive. The Slavic calendar of annual rites was consistent with the crucial moments of the solar cycle. The whole year was imbued with ritual contacts with the dead, waiting for their arrival, presence, and supporting them in various established ways.
Traditional beliefs and practices intertwined with the dominant Christian behaviour and attitudes associated with death and funerals, as well as the methods recommended by the Church to support the soul of the deceased. A Christian funeral, crucial for the salvation of the dead, consisted of ritual celebrations, gestures and a series of prayers recited for the deceased.
The circle of beliefs and ideas about the other world was an area where religious syncretism was very clear even many centuries after the initial Christianization. The remaining fragments of the ancient Slavic conceptions of the afterlife, plucked from the once coherent systems, still coexisted with the assimilated threads of Christian teaching in the waning centuries of the Middle Ages. They were expressed in the efforts to secure well-being, supernatural care and the integration with dead ancestors.
Introduction
In the late Middle Ages, the increasing concern for salvation as the full reward for fulfilling the precepts of faith and the Church was a sign of uncertainty about the posthumous fate of the human being. Exertions such as prayers and the final parts of religious songs contained an element of hope for the successful completion of the earthly existence. All eschatological issues had a widespread foundation.
The doctrine of the Church, a component of which is the doctrine of reward and
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punishment for sin and the posthumous fate of the human soul, was common to all countries of the Western christianitas. They also shared the basic teachings and the essential religious content which were transmitted to the faithful during sermons and confession, and placed on the walls of churches in the form of iconography.
In recent decades, the French, Anglo-Saxon and American studies which culminated in the extensive, synthetic works by Philippe Ariès and Michel Vovelle, identified a broad program of study of the evolution of attitudes towards death in the long term.1 They also influenced the analytical trend in research which relates to the ideas, rituals, practices, devotional behaviours, and collective feelings associated with a larger discourse of death. 2
The Christian doctrine of reward and punishment after death was confronted with the local traditional beliefs. Initially, they clearly emerged from Slavic paganism, and later, after being forgotten, were manifested in practices and attitudes which theologians refer to as superstitious. Studying the phenomena of medieval culture in the field of collective mentality and imagination raises questions about the possibility of moving to the level of the common and the uneducated. Those
“illiterati et idiotae” did not leave any direct records of their thoughts, feelings and ideas. A look at the pre-Christian layer of the Slavic notion of the world of the dead is only possible due to the writings left by theologians and preachers who meticulously recorded all traditional folk beliefs and practices in order to stigmatize them as errors and excesses in faith and Christian worship. In its teachings about punishment after death, the Church aimed primarily at effectiveness, and hence agreed to various concessions to the traditional image which was inherent in the minds and imagination of the lay faithful.
There are a number of legitimate and compelling questions about the meaning of the remembrance of the deceased in most Christian holidays, and how far the compromise reached between the practitioners of pre-Christian origin and the Christian eschatological content and ideas. The answers are contained in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century synodal statutes, texts of sermons and the reflections of theologians, scholars and chroniclers who studied the issue of attitudes and the behaviour of the faithful which grew out of their native traditions.
These sources confirm the observance of feasts of the dead in various seasons of the year and practices related to faith in the life of the deceased, which were not accepted by the clergy. The confrontation of the Church with the content hidden behind the annual rites leads to rich and complex issues. One of the battlefields of this clash was where the Christian eschatology met folk beliefs which contained the echoes of archaic notions of the fate of the dead.
The Christian worldview was influenced by traditional ideas such as folk beliefs, attitudes and practices of the local population, especially in rural areas.3 In the Middle Ages, Polish Christian holidays remained consistent with the basic structure
1 Ariès 1981; Vovelle 1983.
2 Paxton 1990; Finucane 1981, 40–60; Caciola 1996; Braet & Verbeke (eds.) 1983; Lecouteux 1990.
3 Brown 1979, 1–115.
of pre-Christian rituals, except for minor temporary deviations.4 Yet, traces of the old Slavic ritual calendar can be clearly identified in the Polish and Czech sources from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These are rituals and practices of the old and wider belief context which confirm the liveliness of certain traditional attitudes and behaviours. The Slavic calendar of annual rites was consistent with the crucial moments of the solar cycle. The whole year was imbued with ritual contacts with the dead, waiting for their arrival, presence, and supporting them in various established ways.
In the traditional culture, the world of the living remained in a stable and close connection with the world of the dead.5 Stanisław of Skarbimierz (ca. 1360–
1431), a fifteenth-century theologian, preacher and rector of the University of Crakow, explained in one of his sermons that it is impossible for the dying and the deceased to inform the living about their posthumous fate, either because they are condemned, remain in chains and cannot return, or they have become saints, fix their eyes on God and will not say anything until he sends them, or are doing their time in purgatory and cannot reveal anything to people without God’s command.6 The preacher pointed to the beliefs regarding the possibility of maintaining contact with the dead and the desire to learn about the posthumous fate of loved ones. The relationship was to be established at the initiative of the dead, whose fate remained at the sole disposal of God. Stanislaw addressed the community of the faithful with reasoning based on the Christian doctrine which proved the groundlessness of such an attitude and acknowledged such behaviour as sinful. Jacob of Paradyz (about 1383–1464), an eminent scholar and theologian, reproached the faithful for asking old women for advice and about the whereabouts of their dead mothers.7
Elements of the remembrance of the dead appeared in most Christian holidays and related folk customs. The souls of the dead which were properly taken care of after death left the mundane world with the prospect of numerous subsequent visits. Establishing contact with the dead in their own world, outside the human settlements, at crossroads, on graves or in other places was to make souls share their knowledge of the future with the living. In their relation with the community of the living, the deceased possessed magical qualities. As beings which belonged to another world they were believed to possess the knowledge of its secrets and the ability to reveal signs of a divinatory nature concerning the future of the living.
People were awaiting the souls of their loved ones on particular occasions called
4 Geremek 1985, 432–482.
5 On the ties between the living and the dead in the early Middle Ages, see Geary 1995, 77–92.
6 Chmielowska (ed.) 1979, Stanisław ze Skarbimierza Sermones sapientiales, 2, 86–87.
7 Porębski (ed.) 1978, Jakub z Paradyża Wybór tekstów, 305: “Mortua est alteri mater sua, inquirit a vetula, an fit in poenis sive in gaudio.” John of Freiburg considered the desire to learn about the posthumous fate of loved ones as the fulfillment of the natural human desire for knowledge; see Ioannes de Friburgo (1518), Summa confessorum, fol. 32 verso b: “Nulla autem inordinatio in hac inquisitione videtur, si aliquis requirat a moriente cognoscere statum eius post mortem subiciendo tamen hoc divino iudicio. Unde nulla ratio videtur, quare debet dici hoc esse peccatum, nisi forte ex dubitatione fidei de futuro statu quasi tentando inquirant.”
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zaduszki (All Souls’). The arrival of these souls, however, took place beyond the reach of the senses of the living.
As for the research questions, it is necessary to consider the practices which commemorated the dead, as well as the forms of support for the souls of those who had passed away, and the Christian ways of supporting them. These problems seem to be particularly important because the Slavic world of the dead was obscured by the Christian doctrine of reward and punishment after death. Nevertheless, the reception of the West-Slavic eschatological system did not erase the late medieval fear of the dead and the need to support them by means different from those which are taught by the Church. All these elements influenced the development of a specific syncretism of beliefs which was reflected in the traditional Polish culture of the Middle Ages. It was represented in the behaviour and attitudes of the broad masses of society where the Slavic pre-Christian beliefs merged with the Christian content. Among the research sources for this issue are statutes of diocesan synods, fragments of sermons, treatises by theologians and preachers, as well as records in the annals.